Between The Bars
by Collider
Summary: CC ficlet, set during "Death Penalty: Final Appeal". In the moments immediately following THAT scene, Will Jeffries finally realises where he stands.


Between The Bars

_"Prove me innocent."_

In that instant, Will Jeffries knew he'd made a terrible mistake. It was a realisation that came all the more bitterly to him with the knowledge that he'd reached the point of no return. Andre Tibbs was dying. There was no chance of a last-minute reprieve, not this time, and Jeffries couldn't help thinking that he was more than a little responsible for it. Tibbs had called on him, had _trusted_ him, in a world where Jeffries knew all too well trust didn't come easily. He'd placed his innocence and his life in the detective's hands, and Will Jeffries had thrown them over his shoulder as if they'd been nothing.

He'd always prided himself on being able to tell right from wrong. In his line of work it was a necessity, but one that came with practise and effort. You couldn't _make_ a good detective; either you had the potential, and the strength of mind to build on that potential, or you didn't. All his life, Jeffries had believed he did. His instincts were good; they were sharp, honed, refined. Oh, he wasn't perfect; he'd had his share of unsolved cases and uncertain calls through the course of his career… but not this. Never anything like this.

Reaching the wrong answer was one thing. It happened to everyone. Coming to the wrong conclusion, reading the words in the wrong light. Hell, he was only human; nobody could live as long as he had without making that sort of mistake at least more times than they could count. Of course, he was bound to get things wrong sometimes. Lack of sleep, lack of coffee, being in a bad mood at the wrong time. But this? This wasn't a wrong answer. It was a wrong decision. It was something entirely different, something entirely beyond his comprehension. He was above that. He was _better_ than that. It didn't happen to him. Not to _him_. He made bad calls, everyone did… but, this time, he'd passed judgement. He'd held a man's life in his hands; he'd heard the man's testimony, he'd looked at the evidence, he'd tried to be objective and honest. And, after weighing up all the options and thinking it through, he'd sentenced that man to death.

He didn't know for sure why Tibbs had picked him, but he had his suspicions. The other man had said it himself. Two black guys, from the same neighbourhood, one grew up a cop while the other grew up a con. Jeffries hadn't wanted to admit it at the time, but there were too many similarities between them. Andre Tibbs had seen something of himself in Will Jeffries, something that Jeffries had wanted to deny had ever existed within him… but looking at him now, watching his last breath dissolve before a silent audience, he saw all of himself. The two men were practically the same, and it hurt Will Jeffries deeper than almost anything he'd ever felt to admit that. Not more than the loss of his wife – there was nothing in the universe that could compare to that, and he would strike down any man that said otherwise – but close. Too close for comfort, and he shivered.

It always hurt to be wrong, he knew, but this struck more deeply than any wrong he'd ever committed in his life. He wasn't a saint, by any stretch of the imagination. He knew his own shortcomings, his own failings, his own flaws. He knew them all, and he'd long ago made peace with them as fragmented pieces of a man that was – he believed – ultimately good. Yeah, he believed that, and he wasn't ashamed of it. Tibbs had said it himself; the very essence of existence lay in finding faith… believing in something more. Maybe there really was more to the doomed man than what had been eating him alive. _Maybe_. But, if there was, it was more than Will Jeffries could do to help him find it now. Andre Tibbs was alone. Alone with his faith. Alone with his truth, the truth he'd sworn to for twelve years, and nobody – least of all Will Jeffries – had believed him. Alone with everything that made him more than anyone had ever seen in him. If it was out there, Jeffries had to believe, he'd find it. Just as Kate Lange had found it in her last moments… just as Tibbs had needed to believe that in the instant he watched the girl die, Jeffries now found himself clinging to the same as he watched the twisted filmstrip of this case come full circle. It was just another in a growing list of ways that he and Andre Tibbs were one and the same, and the realisation caused his blood to run even colder than the sterile chill in the room as the man's heartbeat slowed.

Andre Tibbs had been a worthless alcoholic convict long before he'd been accused of murder. Maybe he would never have made good on himself… and maybe he would have. "_If the ball had bounced just a little bit different…_" he'd said, and the words reverberated eerily in Jeffries's mind. If he'd had the opportunity. If he'd had the right break. If he'd had any one of a million things that Will Jeffries took for granted every day of his life. He could've been anyone. His life really might have turned out differently. If just one person had believed in him when it counted. If someone had told him not to pick up that first drink. If someone had stopped him losing his temper in the Lange household that fateful morning. If one man in all the world had just _believed_ him when he said he hadn't done anything wrong. If any one of those things had come to pass, even for a fractured moment, then maybe Jeffries really would have been looking into a mirror that day.

Will Jeffries was a Homicide Detective, and Kate Lange had been the victim of a homicide. It was his job to see her killer take the fall. He'd just been doing his job. His _job_, and the word spun dizzyingly through his mind, entwining itself around the shrill whine of the medical equipment tolling out Tibbs's death knell. And now both sounds were meshed together in a single endless scream, reminding him – with a simplicity he could no more avoid than he could deny – of everything he'd done. It was his job to avenge wrongful murders… not cause them. And yet, here he was, looking into the cold dead eyes of the man who had pleaded and begged and prayed for Will Jeffries to have faith in him. To believe, genuinely believe, that his truth was the truth that mattered, that there was more to him than the drink and the violence and the accusations. To look right into the eyes of a death row inmate named Andre Tibbs, and see in them a _man_. A man who would one day be vindicated and set free. A man who would one day find his own brand of faith, the faith he'd preached that fateful day to a little girl who had also been taken before her time. So much loss and pain and heartbreak, circling around one man like brightly coloured birds of prey, and only now did Will Jeffries realise that it wasn't right.

Kate Lange had found faith. In the final moments before his death, in those flickering shades of time and self where everything suddenly shone with flawless clarity, Andre Tibbs had been certain of that. It was the one thing, through all the chaos and confusion and second-guessing, the one solitary thing he'd believed with such depthless confidence that even a hardened cynic like Will Jeffries couldn't doubt. Whatever questions had been lingering in his mind over the guilt or innocence of Tibbs, dissolved in that instant, and he knew. Just as Tibbs had looked into the eyes of a dying girl – a girl whose death would be the precursor to his own, though neither of them had known it at the time – and seen that faith, unshakeable and untouchable… now Will Jeffries looked into the eyes of the man and saw the same. It went on, a pattern repeating itself throughout infinity, that faith reflected in the eyes of the dying. One day, Jeffries knew, someone would look into his eyes as he drew his final breath, and see the same.

But not yet. Not while this still hung over him like a borrowed funeral shroud. "_Gotta earn it first_." It was another of Tibbs's anecdotes, raw and cynical, and it rang out through Jeffries's memory like a shot. He'd been talking about something different – hadn't even been talking to Jeffries at all – but the honesty behind the words remained. Will Jeffries had no intention of dying any day soon, however old his bones were feeling right then… but, if he _was_ going to leave this world wrapped up in faith and peace like Kate Lange, he knew he couldn't allow it to happen yet. Not until he'd made it right. If there was one lesson he'd learned by making the switch to cold jobs, it was the simple fact that it was never too late to see justice served. It was never too late to avenge a wrongful murder. Yes, he'd made a bad judgement, had allowed himself to be blinded by circumstantial evidence and his own presumptions. He'd let himself be fooled into believing what was done had been right, because it was so much simpler than stopping to think that maybe the justice system had been corrupt enough to sentence an innocent man to death simply because he made an easy target. He'd screwed up, and a man had died because of it. So what? If death was a legitimate excuse to stop seeking answers – to stop seeking _justice_ – then what the hell did they need murder cops for? No. It wasn't the end. It was the beginning.

He was barely aware of his feet as they propelled him into motion. The movement was slow, almost intangible, as if he was moving through treacle, and he could feel the eyes of every witness in the room tearing through him like a sandstorm. It was a cliché, he knew, admitting to that sudden irrepressible desire to get away from a room that had suddenly shrunk so tight it choked and suffocated him… and yet the feeling was so completely apt. If he didn't get out of there, he knew, he would be sucked into the void, swallowed whole by the emptiness that came with death, beyond even the faith that Tibbs swore he'd seen. Jeffries needed to break free from that spell of death while he still could, while he still had it within himself to do some good in the world. If he remained a moment longer, beneath the too-bright lights breathing in the cloying medicinal stench of electricity coursing through equipment too clean for its purpose and too sterile to be the instrument of so much destruction, then he would lose himself within it. He would forget, if he remained there, that he wasn't one of the dead just yet. He would forget that there was still good he could do, that the world didn't end with Andre Tibbs, even if it had begun with him. It wouldn't end yet. It couldn't. Not like this. Not yet. Not as long as Will Jeffries still had air within his lungs and fire within his heart.

It was his job to avenge wrongful murders, and he would fight to avenge this one with every fibre of his being, until there was nothing left. Andre Tibbs had called on him, had placed his eternally precious faith in _him_, and that was not a responsibility that Jeffries took lightly. It had taken him long enough to realise it… too long. But he'd got there in the end. He always got there in the end. Andre Tibbs had found his peace; now it was Will Jeffries's turn. And he knew exactly where to begin.


End file.
